“It all started with a phone call from Coach Ettore Messina, his vision, his desire to build something big, which I wanted to be a part of. In Frankfurt I started playing as a power forward, then when at the end of my rookie season I came to Trento they moved me to the guard position, and I kept it the following year. It was a learning experience that I will never stop being grateful for.” Shavon Shields came to Milan in the midst of the Covid era. It was the summer of 2020, he had just won the ACB with Vitoria in the Valencia Bubble. He was an established player, but not yet a star. Four years later he is the All-Time Olimpia leading scorer in the EuroLeague. The leading scorer of a team that began playing in this competition in the 1950s. Bob McAdoo preceded him and now follows him. He played in different times, a different basketball, different number of games, but for about 35 years no one had managed to unseat McAdoo. It means a lot. “I’m happy for him, because I know how much this team means for him – his friend, Captain and fellow recordman Nicolò Melli said – I don’t have to be the one telling how great he is as a player, it is clear. Now, he can extend his lead and become maybe virtually unreachable.”

“We were looking for a player who could play both guard and small forward – recalls Coach Ettore Messina -, who had room for improvement and a good reputation. Shields had done very well in Trento and was doing well in Vitoria where they also won the Spanish championship in that period. It seemed to me that he fit well with the team we were building, with Delaney, Rodriguez, Punter, then especially with the arrival of Datome we built a package of wingers who, not coincidentally, was decisive in gaining access to the Final Four. I remember telling him that with us he would have the opportunity to play the pick and roll much more, something he never did in Vitoria; therefore, he would have become much more of a guard and much less of a forward to have a greater impact at the EuroLeague level and he did.”

But before arriving in Milan, even before Frankfurt and Trento and Vitoria, Shavon Shields’ parable began in Nebraska. He wasn’t born there, but that’s where his parents, Will and Senia, met. He was American, born in Kansas but raised in Oklahoma, she was Danish, in America for educational purposes. Will Shields was a football player, a offensive lineman, one of the guys who have to protect the quarterback. As such, he won the “Outland Trophy” reserved for the best college player at the position. He was All-America. Nebraska retired his number 75 jersey. The rest is history: in 1993 he was chosen in the third round by the Kansas City Chiefs, he came off the bench in the first game of his NFL career, after which for 14 seasons he never missed a game again becoming one of the greatest players in history at their position with eight Pro Bowl appearances and finally being named to the football Hall of Fame. “For me that’s all I knew. Your father may be an accountant, businessman or a plumber, mine was a football player, that’s all I knew and was familiar with. I also thought about playing football, I even tried for a couple of years, but I saw that it wasn’t for me. My dad however taught me how to behave, how to be a professional, and come to the gym and do your job every day.”

Shavon hasn’t exactly escaped his father’s legend. When he became a promising basketball player, he chose to go to Nebraska, the same school his father and mom attended. He stayed four years; he never had the chance to compete in the NCAA Tournament but were four high-level years for him. As a senior, a bad injury, more scary than bad actually, hurt him in his pursuit of an opportunity in the NBA. “When you grow up in the United States you dream of playing in the NBA, so it was disappointing, but I took the chance to come to Europe and try to become the best player I could be and win as much as possible because in the end what matters is winning. The goal in this respect has never changed, whether I was in America or Europe.”

But coming to Europe was not a culture shock as it was for many of his peers. “No, I had already been to Europe many times, I knew the European culture, thanks to my mother. From this point of view, I was at an advantage.” The first stop was Frankfurt, then it was Trento at the end of the first year and ironically Shields’ growth as a player has never been as clear to anyone as it was in Milan. “The first year we never even thought that he could play the pick and roll – recalls Mario Fioretti who was already on the Milan bench at the time – The problem was having a big body, a physical player to guard him and contain his one-on-one game. At the time it was clear that he had potential and scoring ability, but since then he has added many things to his arsenal.”

Shields played two Italian league finals with Trento, then went to Spain and in his second year in Vitoria he played a third and won it. In 2020 he arrived in Milan, established but not yet an All-EuroLeague player as he later became and no one thought he could become a historic figure for Olimpia, as the two championships and the two Italian Cups won already indicate today. Indeed, in the Super Cup Final Four in 2021, Shields was not among the six foreigners on the roster. “In reality – Coach Messina explains – we wanted to protect, respect, the players who were already with us and had done well like Vlado Micov and Kaleb Tarczewski. We kept him and Zach LeDay out. It was a matter of seniority like in American colleges which they both understood perfectly. Then there was the misfortune of Micov’s injury in the final game after a few minutes. We didn’t have Shields and we didn’t have Micov. Luckily, we still won.” The fact is that from that moment on, Shields’ role has always been fundamental for the team.

“Shavon’s evolution – reflects the Coach – began when he understood how he could be an impactful player on both sides of the floor. He was already used to taking the opponent’s best player, but in Vitoria he was a complementary guy on offense, a fourth or even fifth option. Here he has increasingly become a first option especially when he has a mismatch to exploit. I remember when in Munich, at the start of the EuroLeague season, in his first year, he made the winning basket, a three-pointer. We must recognize that he worked a lot with Mario Fioretti on his three-point shot and this allowed him to become a more consistent player.” His confidence in shooting threes is well-explained by the numbers: in his first year in the EuroLeague in Vitoria he attempted 2.2 three-pointers per game, then 3.1 in his second year, 3.5 in his first season in Milan, 4.1 in the second (in the third he played only 10 games due to injury, and attempted only 2.9 three-point shots per game). This season, he averages 6.7 attempts per game, a tremendous leap supported by the numbers. Currently, he is shooting 42.8 percent from beyond the arc, essentially the same accuracy he had in 2020/21, so far, his best shooting season, but back then he had about half as many attempts. In terms of average points scored and index rating this is by far his best season. He’s had moments of shooting omnipotence like in November when he shot 55.7 percent from three across all the competitions. In November, he shot 50.1 percent on threes on over eight attempts per game.

So, what meaning should we attribute to this record? “These are personal satisfactions that make you feel good, especially at the end of your career. They allow you to be remembered a little longer and they show that you have done something good. Obviously, they are made to be beaten. No one will ever be able to erase Bob McAdoo because he achieved that record by winning two European titles in the process. This is unmatchable. But Shavon also played on a Final Four team and he scored his point within a much more competitive competition. I think he will have good memories too,” Messina says.